Sunday Skate

If you weren't at Incredible Ice Sunday, you missed some good old fashioned hockey fun.

Jacques Martin was back on the ice and put his team through an intense practice. The team did a lot of puck control /possession and speed drills, JM saying he wanted to stress that effort can't tail off after 20, 40 or 50 minutes of play.

The team came off the ice exhausted and sweaty. But they get today off, next practice Tuesday morning in Coral Springs. It's open to the public if you want to play a little hooky. Tell the boss you ate some bad bacon -- or some sort of shellfish -- and you should be right as rain. Just don't spend the rest of the day golfing or fishing. Getting a sunburn after calling in sick isn't too smart. Yeah, it's happened to me back in my Publix days. Hey, it was a Canes game.

-- Kamil Kreps is headed back to Rochester, so either Richard Zednik is back on Wednesday or JM is going to play all seven D-men and not bench anyone. Or, he's calling someone else up before Wednesday's game in Brandon.

-- Olli says don't blame Tomas Vokoun for Florida's first 0-2 start since 2001. "We're not making the plays,'' the captain said.

-- Nathan Horton said he wasn't fighting out of frustration Saturday night, but was just trying to defend himself. Looks like Nate has a future in mixed martial arts fighting once he retires. Dude was throwing hard and fast. And that's on skates. But, you don't want Nathan fighting too much. Being a big part of the offense, Florida's offense suffers if he's in the box for five minutes every night. But last night was OK. Game was out of reach, five minutes left. And it fired up the diehards who stuck it out.

-- Here's Herald staff photog John VanBeekum's photo of the fight; Nate liked it so much he stole my sports section. I didn't have the heart to tell him the Sunday Herald only costs 50 cents in Broward County.